


You Are Here

by Stakebait



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-26
Updated: 2010-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:59:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Angelus tortures Giles, Oz helps him find himself again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowery-twat](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=flowery-twat).



  
With Oz, Giles relearns the limits of his body, where he stops.

It takes a long time. Angel — Angelus — had crossed that line in more ways that he could count, and sex was the least of it: with words and whispers, with knives and nails, with teeth and shards of glass pressing in. It was quite surprising really how very far you have to push before the skin finally breaks.

The first time, anyway. After that he bled faster, the blood flowing until he was more out than in. He could see himself on the floor, the rope, Angel's shirt, in the shine in Drusilla's eyes. Dru had crossed over with a look, a kiss. Went walking in his mind like a picnic, picking the prettiest flowers. Poor Jenny. Yes. Very hard, in these latter days, to know where he begins and ends.

Giles can't cry, and Oz alone doesn't try to make him. Giles loves them all so very much, loves them more for each failure to reach him, each benighted casserole Willow leaves warming in his oven, each blade of grass Xander cuts within an inch of its life, each time Buffy tries to prime his tears with her own. She brings her own big box of Kleenex, so practical and stupid and American and dear. Giles knows his pale, dry grief frightens them, but he can't help it. He can't start leaking again now, or there'll be nothing left.

Oz's hands on his body are like the lines on a map. Ah yes, ribs. Of course, the inside of a forearm, soft and pale. Stomach, a little scarred. New lines, white and red, that Oz traces like a labyrinth, never lifting his finger. Arch of the foot.

Giles can feel countries and territories, colonies and provinces springing to life under his fingers. But that's misleading. Who they belong to is not the point, so long as they are precise, defined. Oz is more like the God of Genesis, gathering up the land and separating it from the waters.

After a week, Giles realizes that the reason no one has commented on Oz moving into the – his -- house is that no one has noticed. He himself doesn't know where Oz lives when he isn't here: more, he'd never thought to ask. The boy isn't secretive, merely self-contained. And now he contains Giles too, like a torn paper sack thrust just in time into – Giles' imagination fails. A leather satchel. A wicker basket. Something that smells fresh, but feels old and smooth and strong.

Oz doesn't say a word when Giles starts drinking: doesn't even look one, which is far more unusual. Maybe he understands this is a test, not an escape. Or maybe he just doesn't talk much. When the shakes hit, Oz just wraps his arms around Giles' waist and holds him together, for hours, listening to Beggar's Banquet and Wish You Were Here and, eventually, the quiet "schtip, schtip" of the needle. He has CDs too, digitally remastered and ready to play forever, or until all of Oz's limbs fall asleep one by one and finally he follows. But Giles needs this now, needs to hear scratches and skips and feel the music cut away from the vinyl one note at a time.

Giles doesn't know how to ask for what he wants, not in a way that Oz would understand. Oz says things like "coffee" and "good song" and "heard he turned into a goldfish." Oz doesn't say things like "please fuck me": at least, not to him. Giles refuses to speculate about what he might say to Willow, but it scarcely matters. This, inside the wooden door, is a different planet from that one, with its own specific gravity and its own language. Upon reflection, Giles is grateful for that most of all.

Perhaps it is his own vocabulary that's deficient. Giles, in those long ago days when he used to be anything, used to be a top. Bottoming was something he'd tried, certainly: for laughs, for a change, for a bit of power or money or a place to stay the night. But it was always a matter of saying "yes", he'd never had to ask the question. For all that he'd heard the words a hundred times on other lips, when he mouthed them silently above Oz's spiked hair they didn't seem to fit properly, like jigsaw pieces jammed together.

In the end Giles simply rolled over onto his stomach in bed one night. He could do mute, he'd had practice. He's learned not to flinch when Oz straddles his hips and starts massaging the tension from his shoulders; Oz has learned not to be gentle. He can feel the boy's cock harden against his arse, knows it will be surprisingly dark and heavy for such a lithe lad. But it doesn't, with Oz, mean anything in particular. Sometimes he gets hard when they're showering, when they're cooking, when he's surveying every inch of Giles' skin. (Two meters altogether, Angelus had said it amounted to.) But Oz won't let him take care of it. He'll do it himself, later, or just let it lie until it fades with sleep.

"It's just a thing that happens," he said. Giles was confused but docile, and pleased enough to stop asking a question which was only driven by good manners. Oz does not seem to approve of manners anyway. He's not rude, he's merely… not applicable to such commonplaces as good morning and good evening, won't you have another tea, smoke, orgasm; no, after you.

Giles remembers, belatedly, to lift his hips, rubbing his arse against Oz's cock. That's how it's done, this flirting, he remembers. Oz stops short and when Giles risks a glance back over his shoulder, Oz's expression is puzzled.

"Thought we were done with that," he says.

"With what?" Giles parries, ignoring the slightly sinking feeling in his stomach.

"The social lying." And he's right, of course, Giles is not horny, and he wouldn't crave this if he were. He merely needs Oz to finish making him. That's what it feels like, if he's honest, not merely making him whole.

Oz's hands take Giles by the shoulders to turn him over and Giles doesn't resist, doesn't even think of resisting. His hands over Giles' heart are warm and heavy, like he's going to start doing CPR. Idly Giles wonders whether it would do some good: in this as in so much else, he's prepared to trust Oz's judgement. The boy appears to know what he's doing. Giles hasn't known what he's doing since he finished the de-invitation spell, except when he's at work and wearing one mask or another: he's more than willing to defer to an expert.

"Hey," Oz says. "I'm in here with you." His hands, always faster and more mobile than his mouth, describe a bubble, or perhaps a canopy bed.

"That's the trouble," Giles says, "You're not."

"Didn't think you were ready," Oz answers. No matter how many times he looks into them, his clear eyes are always deeper than Giles remembers.

"I don't suppose I will be, until after," Giles says, and the sheer absurd contradiction of the words is enough to stop him there. But Oz doesn't listen to words anyway, he listens to something else around them, or chords, perhaps, underneath. And he cocks his head and says "yeah," and after that it is all very simple.

Giles doesn't come. He hasn't healed yet, not completely, and there are unpredictable, hissing moments of pain. Giles presses his mouth to the pale hollows of Oz's shoulder, and tastes salt sweat, and gives thanks to nothing in particular that the boy knows enough not to stop.

Oz comes and looks surprised about it. Giles almost smiles. And then, cautiously, he does smile. Nothing breaks.

Giles wants to say "thank you" or "I owe you" or — something, but those are social words again and anyway the boy is to all intents and purposes asleep, legs tangled with Giles' and the remains of the covers. Giles lies very still until his heart slows, and he breathes in whenever Oz breathes out.


End file.
